Here and now, in this life, placing our happiness in God will require that we relinquish the desire for happiness on our own terms and cultivate instead the patience to wait for God. The way to fulfillment of self may therefore seem more like sacrifice of self…. Because our desires remain disordered even after the fundamental division within the self has been overcome [in conversion], the God who is our happiness may not make us happy here and now…. We can look for happiness to the good things that draw us here and now, even though they will not finally satisfy the heart’s longing. Or we can redirect that longing to the God who can satisfy it but in whom we cannot rest here and now. That is, we can have a sham happiness that will not really satisfy - or we can relinquish the desire to grasp the happy life here and now, leaving open in our being a gaping wound that God must fill in his own good time. We should be reluctant to adopt strategies that invite us to underplay the importance of self-sacrifice in the Christian life.
— Gilbert C. Meilaender, The Way That Leads There: Augustinian Reflections on the Christian Life
